There are a lot of possible causes... are your Energy Saver settings under System Preferences set to maximize performance? Also, have you tried closing other programs before running CoD? You may also want to check how much system RAM is being used... there is a chance that some of your RAM is being swapped to the hard drive, which will drastically reduce performance. To check that, open Activity Monitor under Applications/Utilities, and click on "System Memory". Look at the Page ins and Page outs and write down what they are. Then play CoD for a while (until it starts lagging again) and then re-check to see what the page ins/out numbers are. If OS X is swapping your RAM to disk a lot during gameplay, those numbers will increase substantially. The only solution there (other than closing all other programs) is to buy and install more RAM.

There are a lot of possible causes... are your Energy Saver settings under System Preferences set to maximize performance? Also, have you tried closing other programs before running CoD? You may also want to check how much system RAM is being used... there is a chance that some of your RAM is being swapped to the hard drive, which will drastically reduce performance. To check that, open Activity Monitor under Applications/Utilities, and click on "System Memory". Look at the Page ins and Page outs and write down what they are. Then play CoD for a while (until it starts lagging again) and then re-check to see what the page ins/out numbers are. If OS X is swapping your RAM to disk a lot during gameplay, those numbers will increase substantially. The only solution there (other than closing all other programs) is to buy and install more RAM.

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Maximize performance? I don't see it in the Energy Saving settings. I'm using a laptop.

Ok, I played CoD4 for about an hour. I quitted the app and here are the page in and page out, the only apps running at the time I added below are Firefox, System Preferences and of course, Activity Monitor.

Maximize performance? I don't see it in the Energy Saving settings. I'm using a laptop.

Ok, I played CoD4 for about an hour. I quitted the app and here are the page in and page out, the only apps running at the time I added below are Firefox, System Preferences and of course, Activity Monitor.

Page in: 151.1MB
Page out: 88 KB

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It's been a while since I last used OS X on a laptop... the last time I checked there was an option to run the CPU at full speed or at reduced speed to save power. I guess Apple disabled that feature in more recent versions of OS X.

Those page in/out numbers sound fine, so it seems like you have enough RAM. About the only other idea I can think of off the top of my head is to temporarily change the graphics options so that they aren't as detailed, and see if it helps.

BTW, CoD 4 runs flawlessly at 2560x1440 on the new iMac 27" Quad Core i7... The only way to slow it down is by setting all of the graphics settings to high/insane.

Here is another idea to try: open Activity Monitor and sort the process list by % CPU. Sort it decreasing so that processes using the highest CPU are shown on top. Then play CoD until you encounter the lag. As soon as that happens, hit command-tab to switch over to Activity Monitor. Take a look at the process list and see if there are other processes running that are also taking a lot of CPU. I find that Firefox is a CPU hog sometimes, depending on what web pages are open. It's worth trying to play CoD without Firefox open to see if that helps. Otherwise there could be a system process like Spotlight indexing that is slowing down your system.

Here is another idea to try: open Activity Monitor and sort the process list by % CPU. Sort it decreasing so that processes using the highest CPU are shown on top. Then play CoD until you encounter the lag. As soon as that happens, hit command-tab to switch over to Activity Monitor. Take a look at the process list and see if there are other processes running that are also taking a lot of CPU. I find that Firefox is a CPU hog sometimes, depending on what web pages are open. It's worth trying to play CoD without Firefox open to see if that helps. Otherwise there could be a system process like Spotlight indexing that is slowing down your system.

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Did that, COD 4 is using the most. It started doing this after the EFI update and the lag happens after I die or anything that causes it to return to the previous game save (like shooting Victor in The Sins of the Father).

No problems like this on Windows so I don't think the GPU is causing this.

Did that, COD 4 is using the most. It started doing this after the EFI update and the lag happens after I die or anything that causes it to return to the previous game save (like shooting Victor in The Sins of the Father).

No problems like this on Windows so I don't think the GPU is causing this.

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Question: Do you have both versions of the game, or are you running the windows COD4 via Crossover, basic Wine, or Cider? If so, it could explain the problems.

This usually happens in two levels: The Bog and War Pig, all SAS levels are ok.

Those levels hate me.

I started to think that the spill caused this (I spilled a bit of liquid on the palm rest). I'll play games on Windows XP to see if the same problem is present, if not I can rule out GPU problems and could blame the EFI and SuperDrive updates.

This usually happens in two levels: The Bog and War Pig, all SAS levels are ok.

Those levels hate me.

I started to think that the spill caused this (I spilled a bit of liquid on the palm rest). I'll play games on Windows XP to see if the same problem is present, if not I can rule out GPU problems and could blame the EFI and SuperDrive updates.

EDIT:

Played Halo 2 and Mass Effect on XP, no lag at all.

Perhaps I should reset the SMC?

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The spot where you spilled liquid is around where the hard drive is, so it is worth checking on that... Open up Disk Utility under Applications/Utilities and click on your drive (not "Macintosh HD" but the one above that lists the capacity). Then look at the bottom of the window where it says "S.M.A.R.T. Status" to see if it says "Verified" or "About to Fail". You can also perform a bad block check using TechTool Pro (which comes with the AppleCare discs if you purchased AppleCare), DiskWarrior, Drive Genius 2, Speedtools or similar. If you don't want to go through that, you could also try re-installing CoD to another folder and drag your profile over to it, and play from a different copy.

If nothing else seems to help, you can try the "Repair Disk" option in Disk Utility (on "Macintosh HD" this time) which will do a verify and repair in one step. Same goes for trying "Repair Disk Permissions". If everything is clear there, you can try resetting the SMC using Apple's support doc. The SMC reset fixes other types of problems (such as thermal management) that may or may not be affecting your situation.

This usually happens in two levels: The Bog and War Pig, all SAS levels are ok.

Those levels hate me.

I started to think that the spill caused this (I spilled a bit of liquid on the palm rest). I'll play games on Windows XP to see if the same problem is present, if not I can rule out GPU problems and could blame the EFI and SuperDrive updates.

EDIT:

Played Halo 2 and Mass Effect on XP, no lag at all.

Perhaps I should reset the SMC?

Click to expand...

That's strange. I've heard of plenty of people who have no problems with the Mac port of COD4. Perhaps try reinstalling?

The spot where you spilled liquid is around where the hard drive is, so it is worth checking on that... Open up Disk Utility under Applications/Utilities and click on your drive (not "Macintosh HD" but the one above that lists the capacity). Then look at the bottom of the window where it says "S.M.A.R.T. Status" to see if it says "Verified" or "About to Fail."

Click to expand...

It says "Verified". I already checked the internals, no liquid present.

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